


I don’t know what I’m supposed to do (haunted by the ghost of you)

by CoffeeAndArrows



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Gen, Post 12x10, post season 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23191372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeAndArrows/pseuds/CoffeeAndArrows
Summary: She was clutching at straws, desperate to believe, still telling herself over and over that if the Doctor was gone she would be able to feel it. She would know… right? The ache in her chest would be different, the uncertainty hovering over her would have changed, and this hazy, hesitant existence wouldn’t be so clouded, wouldn’t overwhelm her even on the best days.The Doctor would come back, she was sure of it.or, yaz tries her hardest to accept that the doctor is gone, but can't quite manage it
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 10
Kudos: 55





	I don’t know what I’m supposed to do (haunted by the ghost of you)

**Author's Note:**

> the world is a little miserable right now so here is a little yaz-centric fic to hopefully brighten your day <3
> 
> title from 'the night we met' by lord huron

It had been a week but the grass still felt unfamiliar under her feet, too springy and soft and ironically, too alien. She missed the cool metal of the Tardis, the gentle hum of the engines, the life that seemed to exist inside it that had never made sense to her. Graham had made her promise to call and she’d managed it this morning, but the conversation had been empty. Flat. What was there to say? None of them had any more information than they’d had the moment their unfamiliar Tardis landed on the grass verge half a mile away. 

None of them knew what had happened to the Doctor.

Yaz took a shaky breath. At some point during the last seven days Graham and Ryan seemed to have decided, she could see it in their eyes no matter how quiet they kept about it around her. They didn’t expect the Doctor to return, because they didn’t believe she’d made it out alive. They’d convinced themselves that the Doctor’s plan to save them all had gone off without a hitch, and that she had sacrificed herself for them and saved them and done it all for their own good.

It was an awful idea, one that stung a little too much to bear and it made Yaz’s heart ache, uncountable regrets flooding to the forefront of her mind. That  _ had _ been the plan, Ryan tried to tell her, the last plan they knew of. But she couldn’t believe this was the end.

Instead she was clutching at straws, desperate to believe, still telling herself over and over that if the Doctor was gone she would be able to feel it. She would  _ know _ … right? The ache in her chest would be different, and the uncertainty hovering over her would have changed, this hazy, hesitant existence wouldn’t be so clouded, wouldn’t overwhelm her even on the best days. 

The Doctor would come back, she was sure of it.

  
  


It had been three weeks, and if Yaz closed her eyes she could almost hear the sound of the Tardis being carried towards her on the wind. Maybe… maybe the Doctor was just taking the long way round.

Maybe she’d gotten held up. Maybe she’d bumped into someone else along the way who had needed her help. The Doctor was good, and the Doctor was kind, and the Doctor could never refuse anyone assistance if they needed it. It was one of the many reasons Yaz loved her, and it wouldn’t be fair to be annoyed at her for that now. 

(She could call though, or at least text. All Yaz was asking for was a sign that she was still out there, and would eventually make her way back home.)

  
  


It had been a month, and Ryan finally had dragged her over for tea, not taking no for an answer. She hadn’t returned any of his or Graham’s calls for the last few days, because she had no idea what there was left to say. Graham had given her a long look the moment he saw her, frown deepening in concern before he reached out to pull her into a hug, his warm, comforting embrace almost enough to bring tears to her eyes. 

It wasn’t that his hug wasn’t enough. He just wasn’t the person who’s embrace she desperately craved.

She missed the Doctor’s arms wrapping around her shoulders on the days when she needed it most almost as much as she missed the casual arm the Doctor would sling over her shoulders as they gazed up at the sky, pulling her closer as she pointed up at the stars and gave Yaz a breathtaking guided tour of a distant galaxy. She missed the Doctor feeling close. She missed her touch being real and solid and secure, rather than just a distant memory. 

Yaz closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. Graham still felt the same. He felt alive.

Yaz blinked back her tears, forcing them away. She was tired of crying, and of wishing and hoping and dreaming. She was tired of wanting things she couldn’t have, she was exhausted by trying to explain the thoughts swirling around her mind… and yet, she couldn’t stop.

It had been a month, and she didn’t think it was possible to miss the Doctor more.

  
  


It had been six months, and Yaz didn’t know how to do this anymore.

She couldn’t  _ stop _ believing, because her fragile, tentative faith was the only thing keeping her going. She could see the stars from her bedroom window, the bags under her eyes growing darker the more time she spent staring up at them instead of sleeping, wondering where and when everything went wrong. Wondering whether she could have stopped the Doctor, if she had tried harder. If she had held on a little tighter. If she had found the right words, or expressed the right emotions at the right time.

Wondering what she would do this time, if she was given the chance to relive that moment and could fix it all.

She would trade places in a heartbeat, if she could.

“She has a time machine Yaz,” Ryan said quietly, taking her hand in both of his own because he could see her tears coming, and knew she wouldn’t want him to point them out. He and Graham both knew, she had realised, they both knew that there was something  _ more  _ between her and the Doctor, something she had waited too long to act on and lost her chance to explore, something incredible and breathtaking and now, heartbreaking.

It had been six months, and Yaz hadn’t gotten a chance to fix her mistakes.

It had been six months, and she was starting to realise that maybe, that chance wasn’t coming.

  
  


It had been ten months, and Yaz stopped looking up at the stars. They weren’t coming any closer.

She had to find a way to move on.

  
  


It had been a year, and Yaz rounded the corner of the street next to hers to find an achingly familiar face staring back at her, eyes dancing with warmth and excitement and crinkling at the corners, just as clear as they had been in her memory. Flecks of gold danced in the wind, sunlight filtering through the trees and making the world seem warmer, smoothing out the harsh corners and opening doors which Yaz had spent the last year fighting to keep closed.

Her breath caught in her throat, and she almost reached out to check the scene in front of her was real. She must be dreaming. Surely she was dreaming - she’d tumbled down this slope yet again, overwhelmed by a longing to change the past, and her mind was playing tricks on her. She would wake up soon with an ache in her chest and a hole in her heart and an impossible fantasy tearing her apart from the inside. 

She looked down at the floor, blinking to rid the image in front of her from her mind. She’d been doing so well, recently. For the first time in a year,  _ okay _ seemed almost within her grasp.

But now… 

Yaz tentatively looked back up, hardly able to believe her eyes when she found the Doctor still standing in front of her, just as real as she had seemed before. The world was silent for a moment, nothing existing except the two of them.

The Doctor was magical, there was no other way to describe it. She was a mystery, chaotic and indescribable and beautiful, the definition of the word enigma. And more importantly, she was  _ alive _ .

“Yaz,” the Doctor breathed, the name sounding almost reverent as it fell from her lips. Yaz’s stomach fluttered in a way that was achingly familiar, and her heart caught in her throat. The pressure that had been pressing down on her lungs for almost as long as she could remember lifted, the weight she’d been carrying on her shoulders fading away to be replaced by relief and the answers she’d been almost afraid to hope for. 

She didn’t understand. 

There must be endless stories waiting for her, the truth about the last year needing to be told on a distant galaxy, far away from Earth when it was just the two of them, the universe at their fingertips once again. She didn’t need to understand, not now… the Doctor was  _ here,  _ and that was enough _.  _ The Doctor was with her. She had come back. And right now, she was looking at her as if  _ she _ was the universe, as if she had hung all the stars and left them as a gift, waiting for the right person to come along and fall in love with the twinkling lights scattered across the sky. 

(To fall in love with  _ her _ .)

It had been a year, and her feelings hadn’t faded or changed, only grown stronger.

  
  


It had been a year, and this was her second chance.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: @z-tomaz
> 
> leave some nice comments xx


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